Friendly matches have been fundamental to increasing both the fitness and the continuity of teams that have been facing each other for many years. Although the aim is not to win points or qualify for a tournament, their importance lies in managers being able to propose new strategies and tactics as well as improve team cohesion. If you closely follow these types of matches and enjoy placing bets on them, we have great news. Our team has made available to you a totally free tool where you can closely follow all friendly matches, either in a specific league or between national teams.

Before entering into the world of sports betting, it’s important to have a solid understanding of betting odds. Odds allow us to know how much money we can generate from a successful prediction. As a general rule: higher odds will pay out higher winnings but will have a lower likelihood of success, while lower odds means fewer winnings but a higher likelihood of success. We’ll continue to explain the concept below.

Factors that influence the calculation of friendly matches

Betting platforms consider various aspects when determining the value of the betting odds. Bookmakers will often use advanced algorithms, historical data, databases of statistics, form of the current teams and analysis of the standout players to form their betting lines. Making use of probability and statistics will always be a plus if what we want is to win and get our sports predictions right.

Up to this point, we already have in our map some of the elements considered by bookmakers to score the odds of the different friendly matches. However, it is essential to know how the calculation of the odds is done when we win a bet by getting a prediction right. Actually, carrying out this process is one of the simpler tasks, since it is only necessary to perform a quick and easy mathematical calculation.

To illustrate it better let's take an example of a friendly match between Mexico and the United States, where both are in favor of the Mexicans and the odds are presented as follows on the betting site: "Mexico to win” (1.80), "Draw" (3.00) and "United States to win" (3.00), also let's assume that we bet €10 for Mexico's victory and the our prediction winds up being successful. Now, all we have to do is to multiply the value of the odds by the amount we bet (1.80 x 10 = €18), to come to the conclusion that our total return was €18. Next, simply deduct our initial stake (€10) and we come to our total net profit of €8. Don't forget that this logic works for each of the friendly matches you want to bet on in the different leagues and competitions around the world.

Why calculate the odds of friendly matches?

Having the necessary knowledge to calculate the odds of the friendly matches we have bet on will be fundamental to know how much money we stand to win from each bet. We must also carry out analysis on the teams that we are interested in betting on, even if they are competing in friendly matches that don’t officially count for any competition. Having a better understanding of the teams at play will help us to get an idea of what range of odds to expect and look out for. It will also help to identify potential betting spots that hold high value. That is to say, if a superior team has been playing well and has no injuries in its roster, we can expect very low odds. On the contrary, if there is a weaker team that has mixed form and several injuries to deal with, we know that logic would suggest odds on the higher side as the probability of victory is much lower.

Knowing the most up-to-date statistics of the different teams and starting lineups that face each other in this type of friendly matches will assist us on our way to making winning predictions in 1X2, exact score bets, over/under and both teams to score bets, to name a few examples. Although if you are more into long term bets, we recommend you to consider statistics of past duels, as well as the activity of each team in past tournaments.

Remember that at SportyTrader you can find our special section of predictions of the different leagues and sports at an international level.